The present invention relates to the hotel industry and more particularly to automated systems and methods for assisting in the monitoring, information collection, decision making, training and providing services in the hotel industry.
The hotel industry is a service-based industry with minimal computer infrastructure supporting efficiency and monitoring. The top 10 hotel companies have over 42,000 properties with over 4,000,000 rooms. Today, when the maids are cleaning rooms and a customer would like an early check in, the management will typically call up to the service crew and they manually respond on availability. The way crews select rooms, the way they determine priority in what rooms will need availability first and ways to optimize the floor for service are mainly manual today. This industry is also known for rapid turnover of employees due to the nature of the work. This impacts quality control, consistency and training and causes service related impact to the chain.
Looking past the maid service and management the other services in the hotel industry can also benefit from a more systematic process in service training, coaching, tracking and delivery. In many cases, service-related issues occur because the hotel staff does not know when a guest is in the room. Knowing when a guest is in the room can also eliminate wasted time and bother a guest.
The hotel industry could benefit from a system that assists in addressing one or more of these issues.